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The Omicron wave of the coronavirus appears to be cresting in much of the country. But its economic disruptions have made a postpandemic normal ever more elusive, the New York Times reported. Forecasters have slashed their estimates for economic growth in the first three months of 2022. Some expect January to show the first monthly decline in employment in more than a year. And retail sales and manufacturing production fell in December, suggesting that the impact began well before cases hit their peak. “Those are Omicron’s fingerprints,” said Constance L. Hunter, chief economist for the accounting firm KPMG. “It will slow growth in the beginning of the first quarter.” Global markets yesterday were in a frenzy, with the S&P 500 plunging nearly 4 percent before recovering its losses. Market analysts said that the early declines reflected fears that the Federal Reserve might need to respond more aggressively than expected to rapidly rising prices, a prospect that some economists say has been made more likely by Omicron. Recovery prospects in the longer run are uncertain. Some economists say even temporary job losses could force consumers to pull back their spending, especially now that federal programs that helped families early in the pandemic have largely ended. Others worry that Omicron could compound supply-chain backlogs both in the United States and overseas, prolonging the recent bout of high inflation and putting pressure on the Fed to act.

U.S. business activity grew at its slowest pace in 18 months in January as a winter surge in COVID-19 infections worsened worker shortages at factories, though demand remained strong, Reuters reported. Data firm IHS Markit said on Monday its flash U.S. Composite PMI Output Index, which tracks the manufacturing and services sectors, fell to a reading of 50.8 this month from 57.0 in December. That was the lowest level since July 2020. A reading above 50 indicates growth in the private sector. The flash composite orders index slipped to a still-high reading of 55.0 from 56.6 in December. The IHS Markit survey's flash services sector PMI dropped to a reading of 50.9, also the lowest since July 2020, from 57.6 in December. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a reading of 55.0 this month for the services sector, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. Services industry businesses reported that labor shortages, employee absences and Omicron held back growth. Still, demand for services remained strong and companies managed to hire more workers, reducing the backlog of unfinished work.

Unionization efforts involving some of the most recognizable names in business have dominated headlines across the United States in recent months, the New York Times reported. Starbucks workers in Buffalo and Amazon employees in Bessemer, Ala., and on Staten Island have recently moved to unionize, as have workers at an REI store in Manhattan last week. Successful strikes at John Deere and Kellogg have drawn new attention to the state of the labor movement as well. The prominence of these organizing efforts, however, obscures the steady downward trend of union membership in the United States for more than four decades. In 1983, about 20 percent of employees belonged to a union; by 2021, that number had dropped to just over 10 percent, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly all that decline has been in the private sector. Union membership among government workers at the federal, state and local levels has stayed fairly consistent — about a third of workers, give or take a few percentage points — since the 1970s. Among workers at private companies, on the other hand, union membership has steadily declined for decades, falling to 6 percent last year from 17 percent in 1983. Ruth Milkman, a professor at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center and School of Labor and Urban Studies, said that the pandemic, with its many challenges, has contributed to labor shortages. In some cases, school closures and lack of available child care have led parents — most of them women — to stop working for pay. Other workers have chosen to retire early, consider a career change or live for a period on savings. “It means that employers are having trouble finding workers; it means that any given worker can be picky about what job they take,” Dr. Milkman said. In November 2020, there were about 6.8 million job openings in the United States. A year later, there were almost 10.6 million, according to the same data.

An omicron-driven surge of COVID-19 is hindering the economic recovery from the pandemic, The Hill reported. The swift, record-shattering spike in coronavirus cases has dampened consumer activity, spurred layoffs, and forced millions of Americans out of work to take care of themselves or a sick family member. Private sector data on dining and travel, rising weekly jobless claims, widespread staffing issues, and school closures is pointing to dismal January job gains and slower first-quarter growth. While economists say the omicron variant will not derail the economy as a whole, millions of front-line workers, working parents and service sector businesses are staring down another brutal pandemic winter. Fifty-nine percent of adults believe normal activities pose “moderate” or “large” health risks, according to a poll from Ipsos and Goldman Sachs Investment Research, the highest total since March 2021. Those fears are likely behind a sharp drop in Transportation Security Administration airport throughput and OpenTable’s dining tracker.

The U.S. food system is under renewed strain as COVID-19’s Omicron variant stretches workforces from processing plants to grocery stores, leaving gaps on supermarket shelves, the Wall Street Journal reported. In Arizona, one in 10 processing plant and distribution workers at a major produce company were recently out sick. In Massachusetts, employee illnesses have slowed the flow of fish to supermarkets and restaurants. A grocery chain in the U.S. Southeast had to hire temporary workers after roughly one-third of employees at its distribution centers fell ill. Food-industry executives and analysts warn that the situation could persist for weeks or months, even as the current wave of COVID-19 infections eases. Recent virus-related absences among workers have added to continuing supply and transportation disruptions, keeping some foods scarce. Nearly two years ago, COVID-19 lockdowns drove a surge in grocery buying that cleared store shelves of products such as meat, baking ingredients and paper goods. Now some executives say supply challenges are worse than ever. The lack of workers leaves a broader range of products in short supply, food-industry executives said, with availability sometimes changing daily.

The U.S. hospital-staffing shortage exacerbated by the latest COVID-19 wave is showing signs of easing, but many West Coast and rural states are still seeing the worst of it, Bloomberg News reported. Over the past seven days, about 16.7% of U.S. hospitals have reported critical staffing shortages, down from a recent peak of 18.7% on Jan. 9, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Fewer facilities are reporting shortages in populous New York, Florida and Illinois. The numbers are still concerning to state leaders, but are at least returning to the levels seen in October and November, before the omicron spike. The omicron variant hit the U.S. in December with a surge in infections that dwarfed all previous waves. Now, the recent decline in cases in many areas has helped ease strain at a time when pandemic burnout, the winter holidays and even conflicts over vaccine mandates have made it hard to staff U.S. hospitals. The average omicron infection has proved to be less severe and deadly than previous variants, thanks to inoculations and the variant itself, but it has produced so many cases that hospitalizations jumped anyway. Many health-care workers caught COVID-19 in their communities and had to miss work.

A record of 9 million Americans are out sick due to the current surge of novel coronavirus cases in the country, representing about 6 percent of the U.S. workforce, according to data collected by the Census Bureau, The Hill reported. Between Dec. 29 and Jan. 10, 8.8 million people told the Bureau they were not working due to COVID-19 diagnosis or were taking care of someone with an illness. Another 3.2 million people told the Bureau they weren’t working due to concerns of the virus spreading and getting infected from it, up 25 percent from December. The new figures are the highest since Census began doing the survey around the start of the pandemic, topping last January's peak of 6.6 million workers out, according to the Washington Post. The U.S. is currently dealing with a winter surge of COVID-19 infections as the omicron variant has taken hold across the nation.

Eagle Senior Living, a nonprofit operator of 15 facilities in seven states, has filed for bankruptcy to restructure its roughly $235 million in municipal bond debt, the latest continuing-care community to seek protection from creditors during a pandemic that has increased labor costs, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Ann Arbor, Mich.-based business filed for chapter 11 protection on Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., with plans to reduce its debt by $40 million and transfer and possibly sell certain facilities to new operators. Eagle Senior said that it was having financial trouble before the pandemic but is the latest senior-care business to come under increasing financial pressure due to the COVID-19 pandemic, unable to make debt service payments. Occupancy rates have declined to roughly 81% from more than 90% before the pandemic, Todd Topliff, president of parent American Eagle Delaware Holding Co., said in a sworn declaration. Meanwhile, staffing costs have risen because of outbreak-related hazard payments and overtime, sign-on bonuses and wage increases to make up for “unprecedented” labor shortages across Eagle Senior’s facilities, he said. The business said it had to turn to staffing agencies to supplement its workforce, and continues to combat labor shortages it attributed to vaccine mandates and competition from other industries for workers. Costs also piled up for personal protective equipment, as well as food containers so meals could be personally delivered to residents’ rooms instead of eating in a dining room, Mr. Topliff said in court papers. Supply shortages of various products also added to costs. The business has been operating under several forbearance agreements. The business operates in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida and has a total of 1,000 residents. It has 362 independent living apartments, 641 assisted living units, and 192 memory care units. COVID-19’s rapid spread through eldercare facilities, along with the pandemic’s lockdowns, have deterred many older Americans from moving into senior communities. Nearly 8% of the $41 billion in outstanding senior-living bonds are in default as of December, according to Municipal Market Analytics, the most since tracking began in 2009. The sector now accounts for almost one-quarter of defaulted debt in the muni market, not including bonds caught up in Puerto Rico’s bankruptcy.

A divided U.S. Supreme Court blocked the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s push to get more people vaccinated amid a Covid-19 surge, rejecting an Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule that would have required 80 million workers to get shots or periodic tests, Bloomberg News reported. The court let a separate rule take effect requiring shots for workers in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments from the federal government. The ruling on OSHA limits Biden’s options for increasing the country’s vaccination rate as the omicron variant propels a spike in cases. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says only 63% of the country is fully vaccinated and of that group just 37% have received a booster shot. More than 800,000 people in the U.S. have died from the virus. “Although Congress has indisputably given OSHA the power to regulate occupational dangers, it has not given that agency the power to regulate public health more broadly,” the court said in an unsigned opinion. The court’s three liberals — Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissented. The decision “stymies the federal government’s ability to counter the unparalleled threat that COVID–19 poses to our nation’s workers,” they said in an unusual joint opinion. Biden said in a statement that he was disappointed the court blocked “common-sense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law.” He said it was now up to states and private employers to determine whether to institute such requirements to keep their workplaces safe.